4 The scientific study of societyThe idea of ‘sciences morales et politiques’ began to be developed in France a few decades before the RevolutionDuring the Revolution, these moral and political sciences received official recognition through their representation in the Institut de France.In 1795, the new Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques ranked just under the Académie des Sciences. This disappeared under Napoleon’s reorganization in 1803, but was reestablished in the early 1830s.

5 ‘The backward state of the moral (human) sciences can be remedied by applying to them the methods of physical science, duly extended and generalized.’ John Stuart Mill (1843) In German, the ‘moral sciences’ were referred to as Geisteswissenschaften

6 PositivismPositivism: ‘Any philosophical system that confines itself to the data of experience, excludes a priori or metaphysical explanations, and emphasizes the achievements of science.’Strongly associated (in the French context) with Claude Bernard (Introduction à l’Etude de la Médecine Expérimentale) and Auguste Comte

8 Auguste ComteBelieved in a hierarchy of sciences: mathematics came lowest, then astronomy, physics, chemistry, physiology, and finally sociology, the most advanced of all.Outlined three rules for the positivistic study of society: to confine one’s study to observable externals; to use rigorous methods, and to abstain from moral judgements

9 Statistics and societyA handful of censuses had been conducted in the mid to late eighteenth century, e.g. in Sweden (1749) and the USA (1790).Many European countries established census offices in the 1830s, and provide invaluable records of births, deaths, occupations etc.In France, the Statistical Society of Paris was set up in 1860.

10 PsychologyIn the emergence of experimental psychology, German psychologists were particularly influential, e.g. the ‘psycho-physicist’ Gustav Theodor Fechner ( ), and Wilhelm Wundt ( ), who created a new kind of scientific laboratory intended to study reaction times and thought processes.Later, in the 1890s, Sigmund Freud in Vienna began to use a case study approach to develop methods of psycho-analysis, exploring aspects of the personality encoded in the subconscious.

13 A decadent France?Defeat by Prussia sparked off fears of national decadencePamphlets of the 1870s expressed this very clearly, with titles like La Fin du monde Latin, Des Causes de la décadence française and République ou décadence?Fears of decadence were also associated with the city; with urban anonymity, a concentrated population of workers but also of vagrants and the unemployed, concerns about poor hygiene in living and working conditions and about the difficulty of identifying and controlling criminal elements.

14 A literary cult of decadenceIn Joris-Karl Huysmans’ A Rebours (1884), the hero despairs of modern life and creates an artificial world for himself. The novel was described by one critic as «un véritable festival d’excentricités, d’extravagances, de folies inquiétantes».First referred to by Théophile Gautier in his study of Baudelaire’s poetry in 1869 the idea of decadence in literature was later adopted by Verlaine, and by 1882 Jules Laforgue was using the term to describe many young poets of the day.